PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: Dental caries is one of the most common chronic diseases worldwide, and despite progress in dis- ease prevention in the last 50 years, it continues to be a major public health problem. In the United States, dental caries affects more than 90% of adults, and its treatment is expensive, comprising the majority of dental health care costs (i.e., estimated $50-100 billion annually). Unfortunately, these ex- penditures are concentrated in a caries management paradigm of surgical restoration or extraction, which treats the symptoms of dental caries, while ignoring the root causes of disease. This approach disadvantages those with socioeconomic, geographic, or logistical barriers to accessing routine den- tal care. In fact, socioeconomic and racial differences in disease burden are so extreme that dental caries has become a focal issue in efforts to reduce public health disparities for the NIDCR. In order to shift the caries management paradigm to a model of risk assessment, early intervention, and recur- rence prevention, the etiological factors controlling caries susceptibility will need to be identified. Our project seeks to fill this need, focusing on the genetic factors contributing to disease and applying in- novative statistical methods of modeling dental caries experience. Indeed, studies shown that up to 60% of variation in caries experience may be attributed to host genetics; however, little is presently known about the specific genetic variants that contribute to cariogenesis. This proposal seeks to fill the gap in knowledge regarding the genetic factors leading to dental caries by modeling the patterns of caries across the dentition and conducting gene-mapping analyses.